MTV Music Generator (thing)

MTV Music Generator is a PlayStation (PSOne) game released in 1999 by Codemasters. It's a combination synthesizer, sequencer and sampler, with hundreds of sound samples included. It basically turns your Playstation (along with a tape deck/CD burner) into a home studio.

You can also create complex visual tracks to turn your work into a full-fledged "demo", or just pop in a CD and it will generate 3D graphics to go with the music (like Winamp or iTunes' "visualizer" feature).

The UI is simple and powerful. You can build songs up from preprogrammed blocks of notes, or sequence your own "riffs". 2 years after purchasing the game, I'm still discovering new, useful features. There is a waveform editor, note filters, reverb and echo effects... and anything else you could think of doing to tweak sound is probably in there.

The included samples are 44khz CD-quality, and suitable for many different genres including house, drum'n'bass/jungle, hip-hop, trance, and even rock. Up to 24 tracks are available for mixing, and songs can be up to half an hour in length. Most songs fit in one memory card block, although user-created samples take up much more space.

For anyone who has a Playstation and wants to make electronic music, I advise picking up this game. These days it costs about $20, and outperforms a $200 drum machine in many respects (although lacking MIDI compatibility is a drawback).